Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir(49)

Work made me thirsty, and I had a little more than two centimeters of water reserved for the day. I rewarded myself with giant gulps of refreshment, scooping it out of lidless containers with my last Minnie Mouse cup.

At sundown, I ate the plate of rice and sardines that Manang Biday had left for me. Then I brushed my teeth under moonlight with the last of Sunday’s reserve. Into bed I went, tucking myself under crunchy covers smelling of mothballs; I spent the night reading by the light of mosquito coils. I fell asleep mouthing words off the page, convincing myself that words made my world a little less lonely. Words were my friends. And water, too.



On Monday morning, I woke up at half past four with a bit of a stomachache—more of a side cramp than a full-belly discomfort. I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and drank my morning helping of water in the dark. Mama and Norman still hadn’t come home from Abra, and according to her note, she had prearranged a gypsy cab to take me to school.

I waited for the cab in front of the wrought-iron gates and hopped in as soon as it pulled over. I closed my eyes for a nap in the cab, but my side cramp wouldn’t abide. It morphed into a churning in my lower abdomen, a come-and-go twisting sensation in my gut. After the hour-and-a-half ride, I had sweated out my morning’s serving of water, creating a ring of dampness around the collar of my checkered uniform.

I stepped out of the cab, dragging my backpack behind me and clutching my stomach. I gasped out invisible O’s, then a howl. The twisting in my lower abdomen stretched down to my legs, numbing them so that I could only walk four steps a minute. The school was empty, except for the janitorial staff mopping hallways and watering plants. I padded along, one foot at a time, weakening with every step.

Then something watery leaked out of me: through my underwear, down my leg, and into the ruffle of my sock. It stank. Before I could look down and inspect what had happened, I fell to the floor, faint and unable to motion my limbs, convulsing. A fly landed on my forehead, then another, until five or six or ten swarmed to the rank stench. The first fly bounced on my face as my eyes flickered closed. I slept.

“Papa! Papaaaaa!” I screamed myself awake.

“Shh, shhhh, shhhhh,” a lady whispered as she patted my forehead with a damp cloth. “You’re having a nightmare. It’s okay, you’re at the school clinic. The janitress brought you here.”

“Oh no. I had . . .”

“I know. I cleaned you up. Okay, ka na. But you’re a little feverish and dehydrated, possibly from food poisoning. Do you remember what you last ate?”

“I ate . . . last night. Sardines and rice.”

“Did it smell funny, look funny, taste funny?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“Anything else?”

“No. Just water. Some last night, some this morning.”

“Filtered, boiled, and covered, wasn’t it?”

I shook my head.

“Oh, hija.” She handed me a glass of water from the stand-up dispenser.

I drank it quickly.

The nurse got up to talk to the doctor. They shook their heads as they murmured to each other, glancing at me at the end of each sentence. I avoided eye contact. They must have found out my secret—the barrenness and filthiness of the mansion. What girl who goes to this school gets sick from drinking water at home?

I stayed at the clinic until dismissal time, staring at my feet and the white sheets, which smelled like Clorox. I remembered the afternoon at the pool when the slide flung me to the ground. I missed Paolo and Papa. I missed having a family.

The same gypsy cab that took me to school that morning took me home in the afternoon. Still weak and sad, I moped upstairs with nobody there to ask me, “How was school?” I slouched my way to Paolo’s bathroom.

The ice-cream bucket and gasoline jug were still on the corner tile. Every step sent trembles through the ground, rippling the water in the containers. As I got closer, the rippling seemed more like flickering—pricks and pinches breaking through the water’s surface.

I screamed as I whacked the bucket and jug over. And I kept screaming—slapping and shaking and kicking the disgust off me.

My week’s reserve covered the tile floor—and in it, mosquito larvae wriggled. The micro-tailed babies battled for space in the remaining water, fighting not to slurp down into the drain. I had ingested—sometime between yesterday and that morning—God knows, tens, maybe hundreds, of those larvae.

I ran to the terrace.

“I hate you, Norman!” I screamed, leaning forward against the banister, projecting unto the emptiness before me. “And you, Mama, I hate you, too! You did this to us! To me, to Paolo, to Tachio, to Papa!”

I took a breath.

“Papa, please come get me now! Come back now, Papa. I need you, Papa. Please, get me out.”

I sat on the floor, next to the terrace banister, fitting my legs and arms through the slats, and pressing my face between two bars as I looked out at the convent. The nuns made no singing sound and the bells were silent as I sobbed myself dry, the last bit of my energy vanishing.

“Halika na,” Elma said as she hoisted me up from behind. Come now. She must’ve heard me scream. “Tomorrow the nuns will sing again and tonight we fetch more water.”

We had legs, we had arms, and we had our prayers and each other. This was not the end. I tried to remember, this was the beginning—fetching my own water.